


After Smoke

by whydoyouask



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Angst, Depression, Indescribable Emotions, M/M, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 23:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9792167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whydoyouask/pseuds/whydoyouask
Summary: Kaworu, in a world where Shinji doesn't exist.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write this after being kissed without my permission.  
> WARNING: brief description of a nonconsensual kiss

A cold february morning, a boy who still hasn't found his purpose, lays awake in his bed. As he pretends to sleep, and thus not exist in this empty world, an unexplainable feeling settles in his stomach like freezing ice. He's trying, in vain, to focus on anything but that alien emotion. The room is mostly dark, a few rays of winter sunlight decorating his pale bare back with golden stripes, but they offer no warmth. 

He doesn't want to lift his face from where it's burried in his comfortable pillow, so his mind wanders into the territory of memories and dreams, which are two things that he can't tell apart anymore. _I can't really remember if this happened in a dream or reality, but it still hurts._ In truth, what's been hurting him more, is the things that have not happened and those who can't happen. 

 

 

 

> _Kaworu had somehow ended up in the company of his fellow students from biology class. He did not remember when or if he agreed verbally to go with them, but he was there whether he wanted it or not. He most likey didn't-like he didn't want a lot of things these days. The cafeteria they had chosen was loud, but the soft pink lighting created a calming atmosphere that made him content to stay and drink his warm coffee._
> 
> _He managed to ignore everything that was going on around him thanks to the earphones playing music only he could hear. Of course, like he had been expecting, he was interrupted three or four songs later. They boy who tapped him on the shoulder -persumably to get his attention- had a familiar face, one he saw quite often around campus, but remained anonymous._
> 
> _"Do you want to leave?" the boy had asked. Kaworu did not realise the meaning of the question, until it was already too late. Eager to be back to the small appartment he called home, he had nodded, gathered his things, said his goodbyes to the mostly unknown faces and walked towards the exit. He noticed that the somewhat handsome boy had followed him only when they were both outside._
> 
> _"Where to now?" the stranger asked. Kaworu's only reply was a dumbfounded expression. As the silence stretched between them, he saw the grin on the other's face fall and be replaced by confusion._
> 
> _"I thought I'd go home," he said after a while, wanting to end the misunderstandment, "I feel kind of tired." None of it was a lie, anyway._
> 
> _"Do you mind if I walk you there then?"_
> 
> _And yes yes yes, Kaworu did mind, a lot. But he wasn't used to saying 'no', always putting everyone's needs -even a stanger's- above his own. And if he could change something -anything- about himself it'd be this, because that little weakness had the power to destroy him. It had happened in the past, and it would happen again that night and he had the power to stop it, but he didn't. He was toxic to himself and he knew it. His distant memory of a mother had said so, concerned for him._
> 
> _So he had walked with the boy -whose name he didn't bother to learn- in uncomfortable silence, only broken by awkward small talk. When they reached his building he had stopped walking and stood as he waited for the other to depart. His waiting must have been misanderstood for some kind of expectation because the one second he was obliviously standing on his spot securely away from the boy and the next he was being pushed against the door and kissed forcefully. He remained unresponsive all throughout it, but did not push the other away. Shock and disgust had him frozen._
> 
> _He didn't move even after it stopped and the unknown man had left after promising to meet again, he did not move even when his old neighbour lady asked him if he was okay and helped him into the elevator and then his appartment. He only moved when he was left alone inside the privacy of his own home, the place where he collapsed on his knees and cried harder that he ever had._
> 
> _He was mad mad and so so angry at everyone, but mostly himself. He couldn't believe that he had allowed someone to steal something away from his so casually, that he had sat there as it happened, motionless and frozen. That was his first kiss and instead of happy and content, it had left him broken and empty. The aftertaste -a bitter, unpleasant flavour- was still there for hours later, and an essense that was not him, would make its presence known f_ _orever._

 

It wasn't that he didn't want to be kissed, because he _did_. He just hadn't found the one he wanted to do it with. No one completely satisfied him to the point that he'd want to share something so _intimate_ with them. His mother had told him that the right person would finally come along, but at the age of 21-5 years after her death- he had stopped believing her heartfelt words. 

Everytime he tried to get close someone that way, he experienced a weird feeling he could not put into words. He felt as if he was betraying a person he had not yet met -that perfect person of his that he'd be able to love right away- an emotion acompanied by an unreasonable amount of guilt. His mother -that wise woman- had told him once that he might just be afraid to let someone get that close, but he had stopped believing that, too. 

He wants -needs- more than anything someone to spend his life with. But he wants someone who he can not have, a person that does not even exist. Sometimes that person -faceless and anonymous- whould show up in his dreams just to show him the life he might be living if the illusion he had created existed. Sometimes the dreams were so colorful and intense that they felt like recent memories, making him believe that he would wake up to a warm body next to his own. 

He is starved for touch and affection, but he can't allow anyone but _that_ person to give them to him. He is doomed, cursed to spend the rest of his life alone and miserable. So he gets up to follow his everyday routine in a mechanical way. He does everything without a second thought, but pauses to look at himself in the mirror. He doesn't recognise the man looking back at him, has lost control of his own life. He doesn't do anything about it, just stops looking. 

He lives like that for a very long time. 

 

By the time he's old and every day could be his last one, he's sure of only one thing; He could have lived his life differently, he could have been something more than a teacher who tolerates more than he should, more than the kind lonely neighbour who has more cats than friends, more than the man who he is now, but he still wouldn't have been complete. He isn't crazy, he knows that his life was not a perfect life by any means, but he still doesn't regret it. Because if he had friends, a partner and maybe children, where would he blame his misery? It's much better this way, with people just thinking that he's lonely. 

He goes through his entire life without ever speaking about the way he felt, because everyone just thought they had figured him out. He never complains about it either. He doesn't bother explaining his world to anyone. He never lies to himself by finding other lovers who might offer him a momentary satisfaction. He just keeps dreaming and fantasizing about what could have been, but never was, never had a chance of being. 

 

 

He leaves his last breath in a plain hospital room. In the room a floor above the one his soulless body layed, a new life was born. The little baby had existed in someone's thoughts before he existed in this particular universe, as a faceless phantom. That man had cursed him with leading the same insatiable life as him. 

They were the men who chased after smoke. 

 


End file.
